Bassem treaded water beside Doaa, holding on to her plastic ring. He spotted a man he recognized with a small bottle of water and begged him to give Doaa a sip. She swallowed a tiny amount, then immediately threw up all the seawater she had ingested. Getting all the salt water out of her system helped her feel more alert. She suddenly noticed all the people wailing all around them. Nearby, they heard the anguished cries of Shoukri Al-Assoulli, the Palestinian man they had met on the boat. He was floating on a plastic bag full of empty water bottles and calling out over and over the names of his wife and children: “Hiyam! Ritaj! Yaman!” With one free hand, he pushed water to the side to move up to other survivors asking, “Did you see them? My wife, my kids?” He stopped when he found another friend of his sobbing. He had also lost his wife and children. “How will I tell my mother they are gone?” he asked Shoukri.
One woman pulled out a waterproof mobile phone and tried to call any emergency number that she and others around her could think of. But there was no network. Another woman pulled her phone out of the layers of plastic bags she’d wrapped it in, finding it still dry and hoping she would have better luck. But her battery was dead.
Darkness slowly descended on the survivors floating in the water, and the sea turned black and choppy. Doaa shivered as her cold, wet clothes clung to her. The waves separated the clusters of survivors who had been holding hands, thinking that they would have a better chance of being spotted and rescued if they stuck together. Bassem clung to Doaa’s water ring, and Doaa gripped his arm, terrified that he, too, would float away. Hours passed and the loud sobs of the children became weak whimpers. Doaa felt for the Quran that Walid had given her, comforted that it was still secured just above her heart. She began to recite verses out loud, and soon others around her chimed in. She felt comforted for a brief moment in this circle, and closer to God. The moon and the stars were their only light, illuminating the living and the dead. Bodies floated all around them. “Forgive me, Doaa, you shouldn’t be seeing such things,” Bassem apologized. But she just shook her head and held more firmly to his arm.
Approximately one hundred people had initially survived the shipwreck, but as the night wore on, more people would die from cold, exhaustion, and despair. Some who had lost their families gave up, taking off their life jackets and allowing themselves to sink into the sea. At one point Doaa heard desperate shouts as fellow passengers attempted to give hope to one young man who had removed his life jacket. “Don’t do it,” the other survivors pleaded. “Please don’t give up.” But the young man pushed the life jacket away and sank head down into the sea. He was so close to Doaa she could almost touch him.
Amid the despair, a solidarity emerged among those who were left. People with life jackets moved toward those without them, offering a shoulder to hold on to for a rest. Those with a little food or water shared it. Those whose spirits remained strong comforted and encouraged people who wanted to give up.
Bassem took off his jeans so they wouldn’t weigh him down, but he was losing strength. They had been in the sea for twelve hours. “I’m sorry, Doaa. I’m so sorry,” he kept apologizing. He was devastated that he had insisted they travel by sea when it terrified her so much. “It’s my fault this happened. I shouldn’t have made you get on the boat.”
“We made this choice together,” she told him firmly. His teeth were chattering and his lips had turned blue. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she saw how weak he was, but she kept her voice steady. “We’re going to make it Bassem,” she said, echoing the words he had used to comfort her in the boat. “We’ll be rescued and we’re going to have a family together.”
“I swear to God, Doaa, I love you more than anyone in the world,” Bassem said, clutching her hand. He crossed his arms over the edge of the float, rested his head upon them, and drifted in and out of sleep. Doaa held on to his hand as if it were the only thing keeping her from joining those the sea had taken.
When the sun rose the next day, Doaa saw that the night had taken at least half of the survivors. Corpses were floating all around her, facedown, blue and bloated. Doaa recognized some of them, but not from the group of initial survivors. She realized that they were the people who had drowned when the boat first sank, and their bodies must now have risen to the surface. The people had drowned before her eyes and throughout the night had disappeared their lungs having taken in too much water instead of air, causing their bodies to become heavy and sink. Many of the bodies that now floated in the water had their hands clutched to their chests as if they were cold. Some of the remaining survivors who had made it through the night without life jackets desperately resorted to hanging on to the corpses to keep afloat.
Doaa choked on the stench from the dead. When Bassem awoke and observed the scene around them, he began apologizing again. But this time, Doaa could hear resignation in his voice as if he had given up hope that they would survive. It sounded to Doaa as if his apologies were actually Bassem saying good-bye.
“Don’t worry,” Doaa assured Bassem, feeling her love for him well up in her chest. She, too, had come to accept that they might not make it much longer. “This is our fate.”
A man nearby must have noticed Doaa and Bassem’s spirits flagging. He yelled over to Bassem, “Keep moving or your body will go stiff!” So Bassem let go of the ring and swam off for a few minutes, looking around for something to bring Doaa—a bottle of water to moisten their parched mouths, or a box of juice to combat the dizziness that overwhelmed them both. But there was nothing but endless sea, bobbing heads, and bits of wood. He returned to Doaa, shaking his head. The sun was getting hot, which warmed their bodies but made them thirstier. Bassem was sick from all the salt water he had swallowed, so Doaa stuck her fingers down his throat to help him throw it up. Afterward, Bassem once again crossed his arms over the side of Doaa’s inflatable ring and laid his head on them to rest.
A small group of survivors gathered around the couple, treading water. Some, probably delirious, were saying things that made no sense. One man said, “There is a café nearby, go get us tea!” Amid the cacophony, Bassem looked directly at Doaa, raised his voice loud enough so that everyone could hear, and solemnly declared, “I love you more than anyone I have ever known. I’m sorry I let you down. I only wanted what was best for you.” Doaa saw that his eyes were feverish, and he stared into her eyes as if it was the last time he would ever see them. He spoke with an urgency she hadn’t heard since he’d threatened to go back to Syria if she wouldn’t agree to marry him. It was as if getting the words out was the most important thing he’d ever done. “It was my job to take care of you,” he said, “and I failed. I wanted us to have a new life together. I wanted the best for you. Forgive me before I die, my love.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Doaa told him, through sobs. “We will be together always, in life and in death.” She pleaded with him to hold on, telling him over and over that he was not to blame.
As she reached over to stroke his cheek, she noticed an older man swimming toward them, clutching a small baby on his shoulder. He held on to a water canister with his other hand, kicking his legs hard to get closer to them. When he reached them, he looked at Doaa with pleading eyes and said, “I’m exhausted. Could you please hold on to Malak for a while?” The baby was wearing pink pajamas, had two small teeth, and was crying. Doaa thought the baby looked just like what the name Malak meant—“angel.” The man explained that he was her grandfather. He was a fisherman from Gaza, and they had left to escape the latest Israeli bombardment. Twenty-seven members of their family had been on the boat, and all the others had drowned. “We are the only two who survived. Please keep this girl with you,” he begged. “She is only nine months old. Look after her. Consider her part of you. My life is over.”
Doaa reached for Malak and settled her on her chest, resting the baby’s cheek on the Quran that still lay next to Doaa’s heart. At her touch Malak relaxed and stopped crying, and Doaa immediately took comfort in having the child�
�s body next to hers.
Malak’s grandfather touched Malak’s face. “My little angel, what did you do to deserve this? Poor thing. Good-bye, little one, forgive me, I am going to die.” He then swam off. Doaa and Bassem focused their attention on the small child. The young life seemed to rally Bassem for a little while as he stroked Malak’s soft, cold cheeks. Moments later, Malak’s grandfather returned, checking on her, and, seeing she was in good care, said good-bye again. The next time they looked in his direction, they saw him floating facedown in the sea just ten meters away.
Malak was shivering. Her lips were blue and cracked. Doaa dipped her finger in the sea and gently wet them. She thought that her own spit would be better to use, so the child wouldn’t lick the salt, but Doaa had no moisture to gather from her mouth. She had heard somewhere that rubbing a person’s veins along the wrists keeps the person warm, so she tried that and began to sing songs that her mother had sung to her as a baby.
Bassem also was getting lulled to sleep by Doaa’s singing, and she knew that she had to keep him awake or he might just slip away from her. Doaa clapped her hands at the sides of his head to rouse him.
“I’m scared, Bassem,” she told him, leaning close to his ear, “please don’t leave me alone here in the middle of the sea! Hang on just a little longer and we will be in Europe together.”
Doaa noticed his face was turning from yellow to blue.
He started to speak: “Allah, give Doaa my spirit so that she may live.”
“Don’t say that, Bassem,” Doaa pleaded. “We will be together with God.” But she knew he was completely exhausted and was slipping away from her. Doaa began to cry, thinking that she wouldn’t be able to save him. She knew the only power left in her was her knowledge of the word of God.
“Bassem, before you die, you must swear by the Quran to be sure you die a Muslim, and that your faith goes with you,” she said urgently. “Repeat after me: ‘I swear that there is only one God and Muhammad is his prophet.’”
“‘I swear that there is only one God and Muhammad is his prophet,’” Bassem repeated, then closed his eyes. Doaa slapped his face to keep him awake, but he started to mutter deliriously, “Mom, the silver is for you.”
He was hallucinating. To keep him engaged, Doaa decided to play along. “Okay, Bassem, when you are better, we will go and get the silver. You just stay with me and hang on. Don’t leave me alone.”
Doaa realized Bassem was losing consciousness, and that he had been trying to say good-bye to her. She understood that she had to give him one last gift, and through her tears, she managed to utter a promise: “I chose the same road you chose. I forgive you in this life, and in the hereafter we will be together as well.” Doaa gripped Bassem’s fingers with her right hand while her left arm braced Malak.
After some time, she felt his hands slip from her grasp and she watched him go limp and slide into the water. He began floating away from her, so Doaa desperately tried extending her arm to pull him back toward her, but he was beyond her reach. She couldn’t get out of the inflatable ring without losing hold of Malak. “Bassem,” she cried, “for God’s sake, don’t go! Answer me! I can’t live without you.” She cried out for him over and over, sobbing.
A man swam over and checked Bassem’s pulse. “I’m sorry, but he’s dead,” he told her apathetically.
Doaa understood that, to this man, Bassem’s death was just one of many; at least two dozen people had died since the sun had come up that day. But to Doaa, it was the end of everything. She had lost the most precious person in her life and she wanted to die with him. She imagined letting herself slip through the inflatable ring and into the sea with Bassem. But then she felt Malak’s tiny arms around her neck and realized that she alone was responsible for this child. Doaa knew that she had to try to keep her alive.
Bassem floated facedown in the sea, then slowly began to sink beneath it. The last Doaa saw of him was his thick black hair rising up as the dark water engulfed his head. Then he was gone. She screamed just once as she witnessed this, allowing herself a moment of anguish. A man near Doaa tried comforting her. She recognized him from the boat. The man told Doaa about himself as the sun began to set on another day. He was from Damascus, he said, treading water next to her, and all he wanted was to give his son an education and a future without bombs. He started crying as he told her how he had watched, powerless, as his small son got sucked into the boat’s propeller, which cut off his head. His wife had also drowned before him. “You saw it too—you saw my wife and my son die!” he screamed. Was it his child I witnessed being cut up in the blades? Doaa wondered.
“Don’t cry,” Doaa told the man, “you will be joined together in heaven.”
“You are blessed,” the man replied, “you don’t deserve this.”
Soon, more people began to move toward Doaa for comfort and prayers, but also to ask her to help them vomit up the salt water they had swallowed. Word had gone around that swallowing seawater would quicken death. They must have seen her as she helped Bassem throw up earlier that morning, and one by one, they came over to her and she used her free hand to help them vomit, washing her fingers in the sea after each turn. Though they spit up only water, the smell turned her own stomach, but their visible relief and their words of gratitude comforted her.
It was now Thursday afternoon. I have been in this hell for two full days, Doaa thought. She noted that only about twenty-five now survived. Malak was sleeping most of the time, but whenever she woke, she would cry. Doaa knew that even though Malak couldn’t talk, she was desperate for water.
Among the other survivors was the family she had met on the boat with the two small girls, Sandra and Masa. They were all wearing life jackets, which were keeping them above water, but the older girl, Sandra, started having convulsions, her body shaking all over. Her father was holding her, speaking in a low voice through his sobs. Doaa thought she saw the girl’s soul leaving her small body as she went limp. Sandra’s mother, a determined look on her face, swam toward Doaa, holding the smaller girl, Masa, in both hands.
Sandra’s mother grabbed on to the side of Doaa’s float and looked directly into her eyes. “Please save our baby. I won’t survive.” Without hesitation, Doaa reached for Masa and placed her on her left side, just below Malak, who now had her head nestled under Doaa’s chin. She rested Masa’s head on her rib cage below her breast, and as she did so, the tiny body stretched out on her stomach. She’s not even two years old and has seen this hell, Doaa thought, stroking Masa’s hair and wondering if her small ring would keep all three of them afloat. Masa’s torso was submerged in the water and the waves pushed and splashed at them.
A loud wail pulled Doaa away from her thoughts. Sandra was dead and her parents were weeping beside her floating body. Doaa held her arm tightly around Masa and tried to comfort the grieving woman with some soothing words. But just minutes later, her husband’s body went slack as well. He had given up. His wife looked on in disbelief. “Imad!” she cried. Then, suddenly, she, too, went silent and passed away right before Doaa’s eyes.
As night fell, the sea turned black and shrouded with heavy fog. The girls began to shift restlessly and cry, and Doaa did her best to calm them. She was afraid to move her aching arms in case she lost her grip on them. Their weight on her chest almost stopped her breathing and suppressed her constant urge to cough. She longed for water. Earlier that morning, someone had given them a bit of rich tahini halva candy found floating in the water. “The babies should have it,” the stranger had said, handing it over. Doaa had broken off tiny chunks and pushed them into their open mouths. The sweet taste seemed to calm the girls. She’d saved a bit for herself, but it had only made her thirstier.
Water became an obsession for the survivors. Men urinated in empty plastic bottles and drank the liquid to stay alive. Doaa averted her eyes.
A few meters away, Shoukri Al-Assoulli was treading water near another group of survivors. Like Doaa, he had made it through the last tw
o days, and like Doaa, he had lost everything. Now, he thought he might be losing his mind. The people around him were clearly hallucinating. One said, “Get into my car. Open the door and get into my car!” Another asked for a chair to sit down in. One man invited all the others to his house, which he said was close by.
A man named Foad Eldarma asked Shoukri to call his wife to come and pick him up. Then he asked him to take him home to her. Another man Shoukri recognized, who was also from Gaza, swam over to Shoukri, beckoning him to come with him because, he stated with conviction, he knew a place where they could get water. Shoukri followed him a short distance, kicking his legs, but nothing was there. Another man said that he knew of a café that had all the water they wanted to drink and that they could also smoke shisha pipes. He said he had $100 and would pay for them all and asked, “Do you want to go?”
“Yes,” Shoukri replied.
“But it will take us two hours to swim there!”
“No problem, let’s go!”
A few other men joined them as they moved through the water. “We must go straight, and then at some point we have to turn left,” the man instructed them. Shoukri’s head cleared for a moment and he realized the man was hallucinating and so was he. He swam back to the others to join the cluster of survivors not far from Doaa’s group. A cold fog wrapped around them, blinding them and making them shiver. A woman who’d lost her two daughters was sobbing. “I’m so cold. Please warm me.” Shoukri and his friend Mohammad formed a circle around her to give her protection.
That night, while Shoukri dreamed that he was home with his family, he let go of the bag of water bottles that was keeping him afloat. As soon as he started to sink, he regained consciousness and grabbed on to it again. Later, he pictured himself reaching land and throwing life rings to save people, then offering them water. As the hours passed, he slipped in and out of lucidity. He wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead.
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea Page 17